


SO FUCKIN' FLY I GOT ARACHNOPHOBIA

by 4rl



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spider-Man Fusion, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Developing Friendships, F/M, Fake Character Death, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-08 09:40:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20833349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/4rl/pseuds/4rl
Summary: Fuck up twice? Fuck up thrice.





	SO FUCKIN' FLY I GOT ARACHNOPHOBIA

**Author's Note:**

> title is taken from matt on yahoo answers who once asked: are my lyrics really that good? and he was only 14 
> 
> this isn't my best, and there are parts of it that i hate and parts i like but my only goal was to get it finished. Ha!
> 
> written for #JZ026. retired superhero jeno lee. HA!

It starts like this: a red post-it note on his window, the storm prediction from last week hitting _ now, _ and Jeno going through his closet only to realize he has no more of the _ good _ cat food left. 

That’s his first _ fuck! _ of the day. When he’s knee-deep in old notes and engineering binders, but not even behind his tower of high-school printouts can he find a single can. By his first-year chem, Bongshik mewls. She’s a good cat—she’s just not a _ tasteless _ cat. If it’s anything but the specially imported from fucking _ Canada _ tuna from the grocery near his uni, she refuses to eat. 

Jeno looks at her, and tries to withhold his scream.

And then—_ !!!!!!— _ stupidly fast, Jeno grabs Seol off his bed, staring at the spot her paw had been reaching out towards. His fucking multiplug, still connected to _ all _ his shit, soaked _ wet _ from his open window. 

Number two: “I just saved you from _ death,” _ he tells her, holding her up so they’re face to face, so she can _ see _ the seriousness in his gaze. “Holy fucking shit.”

He holds her to his chest for a solid three minutes, until his heartbeat’s evened out to match the pitter-patter of the rain. And then, he goes to close his window. 

Number three, four, and five: _ Fucking fuck fuck. _There’s a red post-it on his window, paper soaked into a darker shade, and the ink streaming straight down into the droplets on the glass, colouring them golden. 

Jeno doesn’t know what the fuck it says, but he knows what it _ means. _

/

See, back when Jeno was like, four months into the whole superhero thing—he’d met Donghyuck Lee. 

Or, Donghyuck Lee had looked up to find Jeno hanging from one of his dad’s buildings, mask half-off so he could _ breathe, _ and said—“That jawline is to _ die _ for. Jeno Lee?”

Before this point, Donghyuck was like, to _ Jeno, _ the eccentric son of some excessively rich people who went to his university. Jeno would’ve called him cute, but being poor meant he hated rich people on principle. 

After that point—well, Jeno calls it _ blackmailing. _ Donghyuck, like the pretentious, extravagantly wealthy asshole he is, says he prefers to think of it as an _ exchange of information. _

So, Jeno’s at his beck and call for whatever bullshit he wants, and Donghyuck doesn’t let it slip to his six thousand Instagram followers, that like, _ Oh. My. God. !!! Jeno Lee from NSU’s Engineering department is SPIDERMAN. Here’s photographic proof:— _

(“I don’t think I’d phrase it like that,” Donghyuck had said, not even bothering to look up at Jeno. Instead, he refreshed his feed and _ then _ looked up. “And it’s _ seven _ thousand now.”) 

/

Here’s the thing about subways and rain: It’s the fucking _ worst. _ Most of Jeno’s usual routes are down, _ on account _ of the never-ending repair work, and ever-delayed repair work _ on account _ of weather. His converses are soaked through within minutes because the rain water collects on the station floors, and because it’s New Seoul, he’s used to the grime. But, the absolute best part is his hoodie getting soaked through with a rust-coloured stain. Because, everyone on _ Earth _ is taking the train, so obviously he gets pushed into the corner where the ceiling leaks out a coppery substance. Jeno doesn’t _ think _ it’s water. 

But, here’s the thing about _ spidersuits _ in the rain: They’re even _ worse. _ Jeno doesn’t know if it’s the web-formula, or how he wired the thing, or just the _ fucking _ spandex. It’s _ useless _ in the rain, and so, by default, Jeno’s preferred mode of transportation is _ Out of Order. _ Yellow caution warning sign and all. 

And then, the kicker of it all: Here’s the thing about Jeno and Donghyuck: _ technically, _ Jeno’s allowed free access to all of Donghyuck’s properties. The catch is, he has to sneak his way in. 

(“It’s like _ this,” _ Donghyuck explained. “I can’t let you _ in, _ but if, I don’t know, a _ spider _ had somehow made it’s way in—not like _ I _ can do anything about that. Blame the security system for not catching him, appa.”)

So, Jeno goes through the basement window. 

/

Jeno? Jeno knows like a web of people: Jaemin, Jaemin’s girlfriend Hina, Jaemin’s best friend Renjun; Donghyuck, Donghyuck’s brother Jisung, Jisung’s best friend Chenle; he can go on. 

Among this web [of people], he also knows Mark. And among the whole web [of people], not a single one of them makes his brain go as haywire as Mark does. 

That’s the segway into _ this. _

Jeno, shoving his hoodie into Donghyuck’s washing machine, frozen in place, staring at _ Mark. _

Mark, at the bottom of the stairs, eyebrows raised, and mouth about to go five hundred words per minute. 

For _ certain _ reasons—for very specific, _ certain _ reasons, Jeno’s brain short circuits around Mark. 

As in—Mark Lee. A fourth year biology student who’s in the same internship program as Jeno; who has cherry red hair and cheeks that pull up in the cutest way when he smiles; who asks a million questions about what engineering’s like, and what Jeno works on during lab hours, and if he’s listened to this new album that came out, and if he thinks it’s weird that Spiderman knows him by name, and—

“Jeno? How’d you get in here_ ? _ Or—“ he cuts off, trying to gauge Jeno’s expression. “Uh—when?”

The thing is, Jeno’s never really been _ good _ at answering Mark’s questions. Mark can _ ask, _ and Jeno tries to answer but the best he does is: _ hell, just a thing, er—yeah, uhhhh maybe?— _“Uh.”

The best thing about Mark—among the other fourteen things that Jeno will say are The Best Thing About Mark Lee—is that he’s really, _ really _ good at answering for Jeno. _ Yeah I heard it sucks, good luck though!, Well, it looks really cool and knowing you, it’s probably like, the cure to cancer somehow., It was really good, right? I loved the use of the trap beat. Yeah I don’t know either man, I guess it’s kinda cool though. You know, knowing the Spiderman. Haha.— _“Did you come through the backdoor? I dunno, I was like in the kitchen, and thought I heard something down here.”

“Yeah. Yeah,” Jeno shrugs. “Backdoor.”

Lie. But Mark doesn’t have to know about how Jeno landed face-first onto the carpet, and then walked into the doorway because he was _ that _ disoriented. Something about spider-senses hating wool, or whatever. 

“Yeaaaaah,” Mark draws out, slightly nodding his head. “Makes sense.”

And then, he smiles at Jeno. 

/

Note: Jeno is _ so _ fucking _ gone. _

/

Note (2): It’s like, when Mark smiles at him—sometimes when he smiles in general, or to himself, or whatever—something _ burns _ in Jeno’s chest. And it’s not bad, or good, or _ anything. _ It just makes him _ feel. _ Like one day, Jeno’s gonna want _ more _ than just a smile, and that he’ll have it. Mark makes him feel bigger than he is. Makes him feel like he _ could _ be bigger than he is.

/

Turns out, the post-it note was meant to say: _ JISUNG’S GOT SP*D*R POWERS GET UR ASS HERE ASAP!! _

This, he figures out when Donghyuck shoves him in the seat beside Jisung, and—

—_ Oh. _

“Whoa—“ Jisung says, eyes blown wide. “You’re—“

“Yeah,” Jeno says quickly, trying to shut him up. “Yeah. Uh—“

“What’s up?” says the _ one _ person in the room who doesn’t know. “Are you guys good?”

Jeno tilts his smile towards Mark. “It’s all good.”

“So?” Donghyuck whispers, elbowing him under the ribs. Jeno takes another look at Jisung—staring at the table like it has all the answers, shoulders hunched together like all his anxiety starts right where his neck does, the same kid he’s always been. He looks back at Donghyuck—his fear isn’t written all over him like Jisung’s, but in his hands. Clenched on the edge of the table, around his thigh; giving away all the boredom on his face. “Does he have superpowers, or?”

“Actually—“ Mark cuts in here, before Jeno has to think of something to say. _ Love you, _ Jeno thinks. “—They’re kinda like, _ spidey _powers.”

“I fucking hate you,” Donghyuck says, just as Jeno snorts. “But, sure, go on.”

“Okay,” Mark says. And Jeno perks up, because Mark smoothes out his shoulders, and gets on this voice. The one Jeno’s dubbed as his _ passionate _ voice, where his eyes get bright, and he smiles all wide and open as he talks, and his whole body like, vibrates with excitement. “I ran some DNA tests and—“

—turns out, Jisung’s genes are now _ certified _ weird. 

“So, he’s half-spider now?” Is what Donghyuck gets from it. “Jisung, if I find you eating flies—“

Jisung who looks scandalized, looks to Mark for help.

“—Uh, not _ exactly _ what I meant. Just, the human genome is like a mess of shit, because—the entirety of evolution—is written within it, you know. So like, genes that haven’t been expressed since like, we were ants or whatever, are now working. In Jisung. Did that make sense?”

“So, we all come decked out with potential for mods—but Jisung’s the only one that paid, and now is decked out with member-only benefits?”

Jeno, like Jisung, _ stares. _ It’s hard to do anything else when Mark and Donghyuck get into it. And, even though Donghyuck used three different analogies, Mark nods like he got the gist of it.

Jeno? Jeno doesn’t _ need _ to get the gist of it. He _ lives _ it, fuck knowing the biology. All he needs to do, is sneak Jisung a pair of web-shooters under the table and whisper _ tomorrow. _

/

Later, when Jeno’s pressed by Mark, both of them crowded against a pole on the L-train, Mark stares around them, and frowns. 

He scuffs his sneakers against Jeno’s. “There’s something kinda weird about Jisung’s thing.”

“Yeah?” Except he’s drawn to the peek of Mark’s ankle where his jeans are rolled up. A tiny tattoo there he can’t quite make out. 

“Yeah, it’s like—“ Mark blows out a breath, and stares hard at Jeno’s head until he looks up to—_ oh. _ Yeah. “It’s about our lab. TY Industries? So, I tried to find a match for Jisung’s DNA—cuz I lied, it wasn’t _ just _ old genes being expressed, but like, entirely _ new _ chunks of _ coding _ code, were inserted in. And, there was nothing in any of the databases—NCBI BLAST, GENOME SEARCH, y'know those—that matched. So, then, I referenced it with the lab’s database, just for the hell of it—just to check. And—well.”

He looks at Jeno, shrugs and switches his focus. “I don’t know. It was just, kinda weird. And it’s like, not an existing species. Or a mutated one. Yeah.”

Jeno, who just got through the last of his deferred exams _ and _ an organized crime ring, looks away.

/

**nojen**  
aaaaaaaAAAAAAAAA  
_(read)_

**jaemna**  
Yes?  
_(read)_

**nojen**  
AaakaudjsjJudhsn _ (read) _  
majdjaiaJkajdjshsnKKEIDISISN _ (read) _

**jaemna**  
Okkkkkkkkkkk _ (unread) _  
I’m catching dinner with Hina right now, but I’ll come over after _ (unread) _

/

Jeno, once out of lethargy, then out of convenience—leaves his apartment key on top of the doorframe, because, well—no one’s _ actually _ broken in. So, he figures he’s safe.

And in a way he is—Jaemin, the only person who actually bothers to come by—always texts beforehand. So, even if Jeno never has his phone on, charged, or on vibrate or sound or what the fuck ever is the one where you actually get notifications—_ technically, _ he’s safe. 

Which is why there’s no heart attack when he wakes up to Jaemin in his desk chair, legs stretched onto Jeno’s bed, their ankles overlapping. 

“Some pretty informative text messages you sent there,” Jaemin starts, Jeno recognizing the slow drawl that’s going to snipe him into pieces soon enough. “They were—“

“—Yeah,” Jeno says cutting him off before he can start, voice gravelly with sleep. “Yeah, sorry. Fell asleep on my phone.”

“Can you even type on that thing?” Jaemin asks, casting a dubious look over at the grey rectangle of cracked glass beside Jeno’s pillow. Yeah, it’s _ that _ bad. “Not surprised every second text from you is a keysmash.”

“Shut up,” Jeno says. Mostly because he’s still not functionally awake; but, with all the shit that comes out of Jaemin’s mouth _ shut up _ is usually a good bet. Jaemin makes a low humming sound with his throat, all his whining contained into this noise that’s getting higher and higher in pitch. Jeno scrunches his eyes shut, and miserably, _ miserably _tries to force himself into wakefulness.

Five minutes later, he makes it to the point where his eyes crud is rubbed onto his temples and he can blink properly—but is dead to anything more than slowly turn over and stare at Jaemin. 

Jaemin scrutinizes him—eyes narrowed, mouth pursed into something adjacent to a pout, and when he realizes an explanation won’t come—says. “I dragged myself over at 9 p.m for _ this? _ I could be in my room right now, watching a movie with Renjun. Cozy, warm, _ enjoying _ myself.”

Jeno knows the heating in his apartment is shit. He also knows Jaemin knows the corner of which closet Jeno shoves his space heater into, so if he really was assed—Jeno would be feeling the itch of heat crawling into his skin. So he’s not bothered by that. The office chair Jaemin’s sunk into, his straight posture forgone for melting against the curves of the cushion—Jeno’d grabbed it from his neighbor’s discard pile _ forever _ago. It’s been thoroughly worn down to it’s comfiest state; the leather a soft grey, the stuffing losing it’s stiffness to meldability. Even if Jeno hadn’t been on the bed, Jaemin would’ve still gone for his chair. So he’s not bothered by that. It’s—

“Renjun would watch a movie with you?” Comfortably? Cozily? Jeno’s mental image of the guy, nevermind how far he stretches the limits of his imagination, cannot see that happening.

“Renjun would do _ anything _ with me,” Jaemin defends, the puffed up chest of someone who’s 10000% confident in their claims. Jeno’s thinking one glare from Renjun could deflate it. 

“Yeah, sure.“ Jeno scrunches his eyes shut. Forces himself up, meets Jaemin at eye-level, and takes a breath. “Ugh—a lot of shit happened today.”

That deflates him. Whether it’s the tone of Jeno’s voice, or the slump of his shoulders, or whatever the fuck it was that made Jaemin pay attention to him in the first place, all those months ago. Whatever it is—it quiets Jaemin down, the deep, slow drawl of his seeping in to replace his grating. “Like, Mark smiled at you and you took eight minutes to comprehend that he would, or—like your _ Spiderman _shit?”

Two months after Jeno got bitten by a radioactive spider, September rolled around and with it came an annoying, pink-haired, wannabe photographer who wouldn’t leave Jeno _alone. _The first time they met—frosh week, club fair day—Jeno had spun around at the call of his name, and got a crack of camera flash in response. Turns out, Jaemin had read his name off the KSA’s sign-up sheet, saw the red flush crawling up his neck when Mark beamed at him, and figured he’d be a perfect fit for his LGBT Anime club. Jeno’d made a run for it then. If Jaemin got that much from five seconds, the whole Spiderman thing would be over _so_ fast. 

And—it really fucking was. For the first two weeks of class, Jeno turned the other way everytime he saw a flash of pink—which was too fucking often—and Jaemin had found him on every single social media account he had. Even his _ minecraft _ account from middle school. But Jeno remained elusive, alert, _ aware— _ and then he cut through the architecture quad _ once, _saw someone with dark hair on the other side, and forgot about being vigilant. Cue Jaemin, who’d popped out of nowhere to inform Jeno:

  1. He’s gonna be late for the very class he cut across this quad to make it on time for
  2. The very cute boy over there is named Renjun Huang and he’s Jaemin’s _best_ friend, _and_ a member of Jaemin’s dumb club so if Jeno joined, Jaemin would even add in the bonus of putting in a good word. 

Jeno had _ yelped. _ Caused the boy— _ Renjun— _ to look over. As his mouth knitted itself into a frown, Jeno losing all sense to the numbing feeling of mortification—had made a _ run _ for it. 

Two days later, Jaemin’s flash went off and as Jeno looked down from his firescape, Jaemin had held up a perfectly shot, incriminating shot of Spiderman, trying to break into his _ own _ apartment. 

He’d deleted it in the hallway, as Jeno struggled with his bag, trying to simultaneously shove his mask into the bag while groping around for his keys, praying none of his neighbors would come out. Jaemin had smiled at Taeyeon from 4B while Jeno had let his head fall against the door, enduring the embarrassment as Jaemin explained something about an engineering costume event. 

“See,” Jaemin explained, leaning against the wall, reaching out to thumb through the front pocket of his bag. Fishing out a key. “If you just _ heard _ me out—this could’ve been so much less painless for both of us. _ And— _” Then, his voice had gotten less understanding, and more patronizing. “—I would’ve gotten you Renjun’s number.”

Three years later, Jeno still desperately wants Renjun’s number—for different reasons, though—and Jaemin is still weirdly-all-knowing-bordering-on-stalkerish regarding everything in Jeno’s life. And too perceptive.

Jeno takes a deep breath, steeling himself just as a well-aimed web would. “Okay—just don’t tell anyone, _ but _ —Jisung got spider powers. Like me. And Mark thinks he knows how but—like, it’s _ sus, _ okay?”

“Jisungie?” Jaemin shrieks, eyes going cartoonishly round. A solid year of peer mentoring, ended up with Jaemin insisting he’d birthed Jisung from his womb (“And it _ counts, _ because I _ have _ one!”), and Jisung begging to be freed from his clutches, but like metal to magnet, falling prey to every promise of a free meal. Jeno rolls his eyes through Jaemin’s Jisung babble, and zones back in when his voice goes back to normal. “Wait—what’s weird about it. Isn’t New Seoul _ filled _ with radioactive spiders?”

“Well—” He’s _ right. _ Jeno digresses. “—It’s different when it’s from _ our _ lab. Y’know, TY Industries? The one with the internship that’s paying for legit everything in my life?”

A familiar pang of pain runs itself through Jeno’s temples. He screws his eyes shut and waits for the incoming headache to knot itself into the corner of Jeno’s brain, specialized in anxiety. 

“Oh,” Jaemin says. He reaches out, ruffles Jeno’s hair lightly—fingers straying away the first of the tendrils. “Don’t stress about it too much. Go back to sleep, I’ll wake you up when food’s here.” 

“Huh,” Jaemin says, as Jeno’s drifting back to sleep, suddenly warm with affection—the comforting knowledge that any person in the world knows him like this. That it’s Jaemin who does. “TY Labs?” 

/

The next morning, Jeno’s taking out his trash, worrying about Jaemin’s stalkerisms rubbing off on him when he recognizes the blue shoes left in the garbage chute as Taeyeon’s—when Jisung shows up. Jeno _ feels _ him, rather than see—stepping out just as Jisung twists his head around to catch him.

“_ Whoa _ —“ is the first thing he says. The rest follows in quicker suspension. “I was just about to knock. That’s so _ weird. _ Is this going to happen every time? Oh man, am I gonna stop on the street every time I find a radioactive spider nearby?” 

“Uh—“ Jeno says, debating on whether it’d kill his respectability as a mentor if Jisung saw him in his fluffy cat slippers. 

“—Oh man, do you think I’d be able to find other spiderpeople with this? Oh man, that’s gonna be _ so _ weird.” Jisung is _ nervous. _ Jeno doesn’t even have to pay attention to his heartbeat; it’s his natural state. 

He decides _yes_ against his slippers, but reasons spiderpeople _don’t_ _need to be cool._ They’re fucking spiders. 

“Uh, maybe,” Jeno says making his way towards Jisung. He pushes the tips of his fingers against Jisung’s shoulders and guides him away from the door, and towards the fire-exit at the end of the hall. _ Yes, _ Jeno’s building has an elevator. _ No, _ they will not be accessing the roof though it. When Jisung whines, Jeno says something about how spiderpeople need to build stamina anyways. Listen, it’s not like he _ likes _ this—it’s that he’d prefer none of his neighbors think he’s murdering teenage boys by pushing them off 12 story New York buildings. Which, he all but is. 

_ Listen _ —Jisung has spiderpowers, he’ll be _ fine. _

“Hyung—!” Jisung _ never _ calls Jeno ‘hyung’, that’s reserved for Donghyuck in front of their parents, and Mark exclusively. “I am _ not _ fine!”

“Just swing!” Jeno calls down, leaning over the ledge trying not to laugh at Jisung curling his overly-lanky body around the web he’d shot. “Let go and swing!”

“_ No! _ No freaking way! Please just let me up! Please! Hyung! _ Please! _ ” Jisung’s screaming like he’s stranded over the fucking moon or whatever, but he’s _ not. _ Jeno knows what 60MPH winds are like when you’re swinging from high-rise to hi-rise, but this is absolute _ baby _ stuff. 

He peers down, Jisung staring up with his best younger brother pout, eyes huge, glistening. _ My brother won’t let me, but if you— _ Jeno who’s spent _ months _ tormented by this look, has perfected his stone-faced silence.

Jisung starts whining _ again, _ and Jeno’s hit by deja vu—Donghyuck suspended from another, higher building months ago, Jeno trying to kick bad guys off of ledges without _ killing _ them (which meant he was kicking them, _ then _ sending webs at them so they could also hang, right by Donghyuck)—he’d been parroting the same thing. Curses on Jeno’s family name, threats to sue and other rich people shit, the exact phrase _ if you don’t let me down NOW I’m getting you kicked out of NSU! _

Which, _ hilarious. _ Anyways, Jeno takes pity— _ or, _ he very quietly realizes Donghyuck may kill him for terrorizing his brother, even _ if _ he finds it hilarious—and webs him up.

Jisung with solid ground underneath his feet looks like—(1) he's about to throw up (he does not, but does hold his stomach and takes multiple deep, shaky breaths), (2) he's about to cry (which, could've been the wind in his eyes), and (3) he's ready to give up on like, _ everything _ —which is just Jisung's regular state of being. That one's a _ total _ throwaway.

Jeno leans back on the ledge, and watches. 

“_ Never _ —” Jisung heaves. “— _ Never _ doing that again.”

“Jisung, you were hanging off a web for three minutes.”

“Three minutes?” Jisung stares up at him, eyes round. “That was_ only _three minutes?”

He starts shaking his head, chanting _ nope nope nope nope _under his breath. “I can’t do this.”

“C’mon, you _ barely _ started,” Jeno says, finally edging closer to reach out for Jisung’s shoulder. His shirt’s uncomfortably warm, fabric soaked through with sweat, and underneath all that—a heartbeat like a hummingbird pulse. Jeno tries to soften his voice. “You don’t know if you can or can’t yet.”

Jisung stares up at him, mouth pulled into a frown that twists around itself. He looks like the kid Jeno met in high school. The one Donghyuck has pictures saved of, a middle-schooler blowing out candles on a birthday cake. Jaemin’s contact photo for _ Jisungie~ _, a baby with puffed-up cheeks and eyes like little dashes. Just a kid. 

“Do you really wanna be a hero?” Jeno asks. He leads them back, until they’re both at the ledge again, elbows braced over the edge and peering down. NSC looks back up at them, it’s dirty sidewalks and bright, white paint. The guidelines stay clean, but nothing else does.

“Do I want to be a hero?” Jisung asks, hands spazzing out into the air. He looks every bit the kid he is: confused, angry and more than scared. “_ No. _ But I _ have _to be—you get why, right?”

Jeno does. It’s half the spidersense—screeching every time it senses something wrong, the bubble you live in punctured by every instance of a city in terror. And the other half is—

“My brother would _ kill _ me.” Jeno, even if he didn’t know Donghyuck half as well as he thought, and even if he didn’t know Jisung half as well as he thought—would know this. Donghyuck is as much of a terrible older brother is as Jisung is a terrible younger brother. They get along well on most days—Donghyuck sends memes of Jisung’s face; Jisung ducks his head down with a hidden smile when Donghyuck reaches out to mess with his hair; Donghyuck pretending to look surprised when Jisung asks to borrow his credit card, but handing it over anyways—they work _ fine. _ On other days—Jeno mentions Jisung’s name and Donghyuck’s face goes dark, the start of a storm over a clear day; Jisung texts Jeno for his apartment address and swears he’s gonna run away from home; Donghyuck flicks something at Jisung and the sound it makes as it grazes past his cheek, _ hurts _ —when they’re bad, they’re _ bad. _ Donghyuck has standards for his brother, regardless of whether they’re hypocritical or not, that he wants _ upheld. _

“I feel like I’m going to get crushed by them one day,” Jisung said once, Jeno’s dug-out quilt pulled up to his nose, until only his eyes were illuminated against the moonlight. He’d found Jisung crashed onto his couch, broken in hours before Jeno got out of the lab. He’d looked up with red-rimmed eyes, and a crease on his cheek from the pillow—and Jeno hadn’t said anything, just kicked at him til he got into the bed. “Like, Atlas and the sky. I just won’t be able to hold them up anymore.”

Jeno hears it now, the same edge to his voice. A mix of things that he doesn’t know, and the desperate, clawing need to impress someone. 

“Is that why you went to Mark first?” Jeno asks. Donghyuck spent most of yesterday just _ bitching. _ Which, Jeno doesn’t really know, but it’d probably suck if your little brother got superpowers and then went to your best friend instead of you. RIP to Donghyuck, but Mark’s just _ better _ —is what Jeno figured. _ He’d _ go to Mark instead of Donghyuck. 

“No!” Jisung defends. “No way! I went to Mark first cuz like, he had all the _ science _ stuff, y’know? Like—oh man, it was so freaking weird the first couple days—I tried to hi-five Chenle but my hand wouldn’t get off his, and he went _ ‘if you wanted to hold my hand, you could’ve just said _ ’ and—” Jisung buries his head into his arms, and groans. “—It was _ sooooo _ embarrassing. It was _ so _ bad.”

“Oh—” Jeno remembers the first couple days—his apartment a mess, an empty patch on Nal’s back, riding the subway for _ hours _ because he couldn’t get his ass off a seat. “Oh yeah. Fun times.”

“They _ weren’t, _ ” Jisung whines. Then his shoulders lump, and that miserable tone comes crawling back into his voice. Jeno reaches a hand out, fingertips playing along the ridges of Jisung’s shoulder blades. “But it’s like—it was my only _ excuse, _ you know? I couldn’t even control my powers, so I didn’t even have to start being a superhero. But, now that I can—just— _ mmrrghhh. _” 

Jeno’s hand stops, lies flat against Jisung’s spine and he waits. Jisung sorts his breaths out, going from ragged to shuddering to—almost calm. His eyes are trained to a spot underneath them. Narrowed tightly, like it’ll keep the water from leaking out. 

“I don’t—I don’t _ want _ to be ready for it.” Jisung says finally. His voice wet, like it was all those months ago. “How do you do this?”

“I just do,” Jeno answers simply. Because he never really got much of a choice in it. One thing spiralled to another and now—now he’s _ here. _ Which is both strange and not. He’d never really given it much thought because he’d figured there was no point in it—“It’s just what I do Jisung. I don’t know if I was ready for it, but it happened.”

Jisung sinks further into himself, what was a pile of limbs made into a shape of a teenage boy, now is a puddle of small kid. 

“Like, okay—I get that you’re scared of it—but—it’s just a leap, Jisung. That’s all it is. I promise.” Jeno drags his hand up Jisung’s nape, and runs his fingers through Jisung’s hair. A faded shade of pink. A bathroom dye job where his brother had stared unimpressed from his perch in the bathtub, and his best friend had recorded the whole process in one hand, the other covered with a pink-soaked glove. “You just have to jump once, and you’ll know it’s fine.”

Jisung stays still.

Jeno takes another breath. Tries again. “Even if you’re scared Jisung, if you think you _ have _ to do this—then, there’s no way around it. Even if you’ve fallen a million times before. Even if you’ve gotten hurt every single time you tried. All we’re allowed to do is try again. All we can do—is just try. Even if you’re scared—no one else cares about that. You’re not allowed to care about that. You just have to take the leap, and be the hero.”

Jisung takes one more long, shuddery breath. And that’s the end. 

/

Life goes on like, relatively normally. Jeno spends more time with Jisung than he’d ever expected to. And most of the time, Jaemin who’s sworn off spending weekends with Jeno, shows up like clockwork every Saturday morning—the brightness to his smile matching the downturn to Jisung’s mouth, Jeno in between the both of them, rubbing sleep away from his eyes. They go up to the roof, to Lee estates, to—_ once _ —a dance studio Renjun recommended. It had shitty lighting, and creaky floorboards, and Jisung _ swore _ he’d sensed three different spiders. But the equipment storage was unlocked, and none of the room had security cameras, _ so. _ The only thing that ruined it was—

“_ Obviously, _ since _ I’m _ on HRT—” Jaemin had said, voice poised to the most fucking annoying pitch he could make it, Jeno had stared up, body locked into a cringe. “I can’t be getting hit with these electric shots. Jeno, it’s up to _ you. _” 

“How is HRT related to getting hit by electricity?” Jeno’d been _ incredulous. _ Because Jaemin at his best — was the same as Jaemin at his _ worst. _An endlessly annoying asshole. 

“It’s a _ medical _ treatment!” Jaemin had yelped. _ Equally _ as incredulous. “What if the electricity messes with the hormones—what’s going to happen then? What if I become some mutant hyper-testosteroned man—wait, on second thought, that kinda—“

“Jaemin,” Jeno says, cutting him off. “You’re _ so _ stupid.”

Then, they’d both looked to Jisung—who’d shaken hands with Renjun (“Why did I even_ do _ that, that was so stupid— oh my god, what kind of seventeen year old _ shakes _ someone’s hand. Oh my _ god. _ ”), and at Renjun’s resulting yell, figured out he had _ electric _ powers—Jisung stared between the two of them, expression extremely dubious, then said—“Jeno, I think you should do it—cuz like, you have actual superpowers.”

“For real?” Jeno’d asked, dumbfounded. Beside him, Jaemin goes. “Hey!”

“Jaemin’s only power is to be super-annoying.” _ See? _ That’s why Jeno figured that Jisung would’ve chosen him—but the actual turn-out of the situation had been _ way _ more heart-breaking. 

Jeno was still feeling it half-an-hour later, the stun of emotional betrayal numbing out Jisung’s little electric shocks. Or, y’know, being constantly zapped for half-an-hour straight was making his skin feel like static was dancing over it. Whatever. Jeno’d been getting slower with his reaction times, and Jisung’s face had screwed into this weird scrunch and Jeno hadn’t even realized Jaemin had started walking towards the door but—

Renjun. _ Renjun. _ And sure, Jeno couldn’t move out of Jisung’s swing fast enough three seconds earlier—but, as soon as he caught a glimpse of the overgrown black hair—he’d been up on the rafters. Seeing everything upside down, as Renjun’d stared up, and said ‘Hi.’ in the flattest voice possible. 

“_ Never _ —” Jeno says to Jaemin, shoving his shit into his bag, not ten minutes later, zipper catching on the hood of his jacket. “—are we _ ever _ going back there. _ Nope. _”

“It wasn’t _ that _ bad,” Jaemin says, good-natured roll of his eyes. Because _ of course _ Jaemin doesn’t think anything including Renjun is a mortifying ordeal worth going insane distances to avoid. Jaemin, _ of course, _ is _ wrong. _ “Besides, you’re pretty much the worst at the secret-identity thing—what’s another person who knows about Spiderjen to the list?”

“A lot?” Jeno says, voice pitching towards a tone he doesn’t like. “That’s a lot of people who know about my biggest secret and can blackmail me about it?”

Jisung was gone with Renjun—as soon as Renjun mentioned visiting Mark’s lab, Jeno’d crossed the thought out of his head, but Jisung had brightened, the tiniest crackles of lightning coming off his shoulders. They’d been off with a text from Jisung, and a sleek black car showing up five minutes later. Jaemin and Jeno, who are _ poor _—started the slow trudge towards the nearest subway station. 

It’s no worse than every other day of the week, Jeno figures. And it isn’t. It’s how his life drags on: classes, cat food, walks to the subway—either with Jaemin after class, or Mark after lab, or, on very chance conditions—Jisung’s best friend Chenle who drags Jisung by the arm, and insists there’s no way to get to — by car. _ Deal with the dirt! Who cares about all these germs—you have superpowers Jisung! _ He’s bright and peppy, and his hair is dyed a shade of orange that matches the tone of Jisung’s pink. Jeno likes him immediately, and snickers into the collar of his hoodie. Chenle, when he notices offers him a megawatt smile—and later, when he and Jisung are waving goodbye, he tosses Jeno his scarf—yelling _ It’s getting cold out! _ as the doors close between them. 

It’s things like that that keep happening. Mark invites Jeno over to his workspace every time Jisung drops by—more and more often—and he nods along to whatever new thing Jisung’s discovered about himself, draws lines of little check marks down his clipboard, and takes his vitals while tapping his fingers against the desk—but. _ But. _ His foot will be pressing against Jeno’s under the table, and Jisung will be oblivious to whatever secret language of Mark’s Jeno’s trying to decipher. Sometimes, Jeno will get brave, and knock his knee against Mark’s and Mark will pull his lips up into a smile. Almost like he can’t keep the grin off his face. And Jeno, he can’t either. Not when Mark keeps their legs pressed together. 

“Your face looks so freakin’ weird,” Jisung says, with all the judgement of a sixteen year old. And Jeno doesn’t blame him for it, but he does aim one of their prototypes so it hits the leg of his chair and makes him skid backwards. 

Luckily, Jisung is _ sticky. _

/

“You know he can turn _ invisible? _” Jaemin says one night. They’re circling around campus, Jeno waiting on Jaemin, Jaemin waiting on his girlfriend—all three of them, invariably waiting on Hina’s class to finish, so they can go out to dinner. 

“Jisung?” Jeno asks, breath coming out in a puff of white. “For real?”

“Yeah, oh my god—“ Jaemin starts, and then he goes on about how Jisung ran into his dorm the other day, _ complete _ didn’t realize Renjun was his roommate, and vanished on the spot as Jaemin walked out from the hall to this scene. “—I _ totally _ wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it happen. But like, fuck—this feels so mean because Jisung’s so unsuspecting and like, twelve y’know? But his mini-crush on Renjun is seriously the funniest thing in the world.”

“Mini?” Jeno says, raising his brows. Jisung’s crush on Renjun is _ bad. _ Like, middle-school carving initials in desks, hyphenated last names over school worksheets bad. Jeno’s not sure what makes it more tragic: how pointedly Renjun ignores Jisung’s attempts to interact in all his sweaty middle-schooler glory, or the fact Renjun stares at Donghyuck in the same, soul-ending way Donghyuck’s little brother stares at _ him. _

“Do you think it’s gonna be weird if Renjun starts dating?” Jeno asks. 

Jaemin scrunches his face into an expression. It’s something close to willing himself into blissful ignorance, something a little darker—but not clear cut enough that Jeno can read it. “Maybe. Probably. Hope he doesn’t.”

“Wait, really?”

At Jeno’s tone maybe, Jaemin schools his expression into something neater. Nicer. “It’d be weird.” He offers. 

And—sure Jeno lets it go at that, knows how to read Jaemin and the topics he doesn’t like. Knows that it isn’t so much about Renjun being weird, or the Lee brothers being rich or whatever it is—just, Jaemin’s own want to hold onto things. A slow show of possessiveness that makes itself clear in the smallest of ways. Jaemin’s jacket over Jeno’s desk chair. His claim on Jisung’s favourite restaurant. The weird show he does over handing out Renjun’s number. The glint of a necklace around Hina’s neck. 

A trick of light in the dark, their matching smiles glowing white as Jaemin wraps his arms around her. The way one stays looped around her shoulder as they walk, three figures in the dark. One distinctly separate. 

/

“Do you remember that formula you had for, uh—web fluid?” The one Jeno took, fucked around with, and ultimately improved. For _ his _ purposes. 

“Uh, yeah.” Mark looks up at him, clicking away at his windows. His eyes are so very round, and so very dark. Jeno’s—_ you know. _“Why?”

“Just—for Jisung you know? He was wondering if like, it’d be possible to mess around with different forms of web-shooting—cuz—yeah,” Jeno nods, hoping Mark doesn’t read too into it. It’s not _ ideal, _ but even if Jeno managed to read up enough on synthetic biochem—he still wouldn’t know how to make the adjustments work. Not as _ fast _ as Mark would anyways. 

“Oh?” Mark says, kicking out a chair for Jeno. “Huh. I could pull it up. Is it actually what Spiderman uses?”

“Pretty much,” Jeno answers. “Though—he probably made some changes. Just cuz, y’know—patents and copyright and all that shit.”

“Oh—but I published it for free,” Mark says, clicking open some documents, a new program scene—clearing away notebooks from his workspace. “Should’ve been no problem with anyone replicating it.”

Yeah, Jeno _ knows. _ He’d found it, two hours of wide-eyed scrolling through thousands of university-approved databases ‘til he found an undergrad paper, published by a new lab—this formula for super-durable, super-sticky, stretchable elastic, based off real spidersilk formulas. It was _ godsend. _ Jeno’d stared at the researcher's name—Mark Lee—and promised himself not to forget it. Send an anonymous email at some point. And then he’d gotten to work. There was no paywall, no legal bullshit, no—anything. Anyone who needed was free to use and alter it. 

“Yeah,” Jeno says. Good formula, but not perfect. “So—?”

“Sorry, lemme just—” Mark adds a couple more lines of code. Pops up from his chair to jog around the room—metal containers from the cupboards, a quick look at the thermostat, another at the door—back to his desk, crouched on the ground to get his console control open. “—yeah, just—”

Jeno _ works _ at one of these, he knows the drill—slides his chair a foot back and watches the surface rearrange itself—delicate robot arms coming out, arranging themselves into whatever pattern Mark set out—but _ god, _ it’s still so fucking cool to see.

Mark messes with another window for a couple more seconds and—“Okay—” the head of something draws itself apart, a thin, translucent string stretching across two ends of the table, “—this is the original.”

Jeno rolls himself over to Mark, their shoulders pushed together as he stares at the screen. Like clockwork, Mark starts explaining all of it, pulling up windows of variables, and tables of values—

“Just—okay, it’s kind-of weird if you don’t know biochemistry, so like—just—I dunno, maybe tell me what properties you were thinking off and I’ll try to figure out a way for the structure to work. God, it’s like a shitton of guesswork, but like—sometimes you have to be stupid careful, or else the program will go bust trying to force an impossible structure together, y’know?”

“Okay,” Jeno says. His hand brushes against Mark’s when he reaches for the mouse. They both let it stay like that. “How about—”

That’s how they spend the afternoon, Jeno thinking off properties and Mark matching them to structures, both of them staring at the spidersilk being weaved together, hoping this time—it’ll work. The ones that end up as busts (most of them), have Mark scrambling for his textbooks—cheeks blown up to puffs, deflating as his brows twist further and further into little knots. Jeno googles whatever he can, speedreads through Wikipedia articles and papers with titles his eyes glaze over at—softly nudges the back of Mark’s sneakers with his own if he thinks he’s got an idea. They try it out—it fails—Mark squints at the formula til Jeno feels _ his _ eyes blur over and then shoots up like a firework—a quick _ Oh! _ coming out of his mouth, something like ‘ _ Chirality!’ _ or ‘ _ Double N-bond!’ _that he fixes, and then—

Jeno stares slack-jawed at whatever they’ve managed to create—

“No fucking way,” and Jeno stares at—a crystalized web, an unfolding trap, a line of demagnetized thread, conductive spidersilk—every idea he had—everything Jisung had suggested, Jaemin had pitched in with, Jeno figured_ could _ be cool—even ones Mark tried out on his own. 

Hours of work—fixing every little bug, shifting things by a tenth of a degree, an isotope with half a unit less of atomic mass, the table itself til the angle of light hit perfectly—all printed out in neat little formulas and samples spread out over it. Mark’s smile catching on the corner of his mouth, eyes bright with a million blinking lights—

“Holy _ shit _,” Jeno says. And he means a lot of things. 

“You think we’re good for today?” And Jeno can hear it in his voice—the edge of exhaustion that gives away to excitement, the hours of labtime maxed out into something productive, something fun—the want to create, because Jeno knows it too—he knows it well. 

“Dunno,” Jeno smiles. “What’s the saying? They didn’t build Rome in a day?” 

“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Mark corrects, smile growing on his face. Something in bloom. “But, _ we _ could.”

And he really believes it. 

Jeno nudges his backpack back into place. Thinks—_ this isn’t a good idea _—but looks at Mark’s smile and disagrees. 

They go on—Jeno at some point, blinks and finds the windows dark—sky a shade of pitch, his own cheek stuck to a creased textbook page—Mark quietly in his own world, staring at whatever new thing he’d come up with. A glance over at Jeno, asleep across from him. Colour across his cheeks when he realizes Jeno isn’t. 

“Hey,” He says, voice soft, eyes softer. There’s a quality to the way he’s looking that has warmth crawling throughout Jeno’s skin, the back of his neck, the wrist he has stretched out—where his hoodie draws over his fingers, and Mark’s pencil is barely just touching the ends of them. 

“Hey,” Jeno says back. Mark stares for a second too long. “Sorry I fell asleep.” 

Like magic, the moment fades out. Mark smiles at him, shakes his head and leans back in his chair. “It’s fine,” his lashes fan out in dark wisps across his face, and Jeno takes it in. Skin bleached lifeless in the fluorescent light, the red of his hair dark like blood, cheeks sunken in with exhaustion—and despite how unflattering it is—maybe because of how unflattering—Jeno likes him. He doesn’t look wonderful or pretty or cute—but he looks like Mark, and that’s all Jeno wants. 

He looks away. 

“I made this—” Mark says, after a while—holding out a palm, something dark-_ oh. _ “- It’s not—really a web or anything, but—kind of a—failsafe?”

A little spider unfolds in Mark’s hand. Delicate and mechanical, a tiny white ‘x’ over it’s body. “It’s not poisonous or anything—just a paralyzing toxin—if you let it bite someone, they _ should _ just have their body be frozen—kinda like, cryofreeze? But not—exactly. I was thinking it could—”

“That’s brilliant,” Jeno says—cuts him off because he can hear the way Mark’s tumbling words together, the longer he goes on the more nervous he gets—he doesn’t have to be. “Thank you.” 

“Oh,” Mark says. There’s a catch to his breath. A tilt to his mouth. Eyes, bright. Brighter. Endlessly bright. “You’re welcome.”

/

Jeno’s life goes on. He squints at his phone, ignores voicemails from Donghyuck, likes Mark’s instagram updates with Renjun, hovers his fingers over the keyboard when Jaemin doesn’t text for the sixth day in a row—figures—

“Someone would probably text if there was something wrong,” Jeno tells Nal, pressing his nose into her back. “Right?” 

She mewls in reply, shifting in his grip. Bongshik’s perched on his window sill, a silhouette against the light, and Seol is off somewhere else in the apartment—every once in a while, Jeno will tilt his head and listen for the tell-tale scratch of her claws against the carpet. They’re fine like this, Jeno reasons—his bed is comfy, his cats are fluffy, he doesn’t want to call Jaemin and be inevitably dragged out to whatever new spot popped up. 

Turns out, Jaemin _ is _ fine. Renjun texts him a few days later, after Jeno’s spent his entire week rolling around in his bed, cats jumping on and off him in rotation—says, _ come over i need to get jaemin out of here. hes not dead or anything tho just annyoing like fuck _

To which Jeno replies: _ Ok _

/

It ends up like this: Donghyuck across from Jeno, limbs stretched out on the office chair he’s in, the side of his foot brushing against Renjun’s knee in a way Renjun’s hyperaware of—Jeno can _ tell, _ if it’s just from the way he’s pretending to ignore it—posture perfectly relaxed as he’s cross-legged on the floor. On the other hand—Jaemin’s hunched in the corner where his bed meets the wall, pillows and sheets bunched up around him, dark circles worse than Jeno’s ever seen them—still typing away at his laptop. 

Jeno here, makes an executive decision to—

“Really?” Jaemin asks, when he’s staring down at lapful of Jeno. 

Jeno tilts his head, adds another line of keysmash to Jaemin’s code and says, “It’s what my cats do.”

A couple things: the ever-present, polite curl to Jaemin’s lips is conspicuously absent, from Renjun’s muttered complaints—Jeno knows he hasn’t eaten anything other than coffee and dry ramen in the past week, and the thing they say about CS students and showering? Jeno’s wishing his spiderpowers never enhanced his sense of smell. Jaemin is _ rank. _

“Fuck dude,” Jeno says. “You smell so bad right now. Shower—you gotta shower.”

“Fuck off—“ Jaemin says, shoving him away. Jeno sits up outraged. 

“—I’m serious!” He turns, down to, “—Renjun, how are you surviving?”

“Ha,” Renjun intones, dry. “No sense-enhancement remember?”

“Jaemin,” Jeno says, hand curled around his elbow—tugging. “We are going to declassify you as a biohazard.”

“Are we on laundry duty, then?” Donghyuck calls out as Jeno grabs Jaemin’s showercaddy and leads them out. He doesn’t see it—but he can sense the perk in Renjun’s heartbeat when Donghyuck turns to him.

Later, while Jaemin’s still in the shower, Renjun and Donghyuck back from their adventures—Jeno attempts to get the whole story. 

“Is he okay?” Jeno asks, open question poised to—

“He’s been like that for a whole week,” Renjun answers. “I’m going to go crazy.”

“Apparently,” Donghyuck answers. “He’s hacking into your lab. Some interesting radioactive spiders in there.” 

“There’s radioactive spiders everywhere in New X,” Jeno says. “That’s not a thing.”

“The ones in your lab, though—” Donghyuck says, a playful tilt to his mouth that doesn’t match his eyes. “—are what infected Jisung.” 

“Oh,” Jeno says. Yeah, he’d figured. He _ knew. _Mark had—

“Weird though,” Donghyuck continues. “Mark never said anything.”

“Ah.” Mark had—

Donghyuck looks at him. “You knew too, didn’t you?”

“Jisung’s _ safe, _” Jeno says. He doesn’t miss the change in mood. How carefully quiet Renjun stays. “He’s fine. I didn’t think it mattered outside of that.”

Donghyuck stares for a couple more seconds, then breaks away. “Yeah, of course. _ Safe. _”

The silence stretches between them, an ever-growing distance. 

“Hey,” Renjun says finally. “Let’s go to a party tonight.”

/

A million years ago, Jeno had figured that Renjun and Jaemin were dating. Or on the path to it. But Renjun had said _ no _with a frown on his face like he didn’t like thinking of the idea. And Jeno never got the chance to ask Jaemin—instead, the day he’d met Hina, he watched the way Jaemin’s face broke into a smile, like how a star expands into existence. How clouds part to reveal the sun. How Hina opens her arms to let Jaemin step into her hug, a kiss pressed to his cheek. 

There’s relationships—the lowkey ones, Jeno’s seen Donghyuck with Yeri during first year, the way their dates hardly ever seemed like dates, just two friends laughing through a window, pressed together on a bench, him reaching over to push a lock of her hair—the way they’d both snap back in laughter. Lowkey. And, he’s seen the networking ones—Chenle and Tall, Tan and Handsome—the kid walking around at events, Lucas trailing behind him like a puppy, instagram updates on rooftop restaurants, and matching Gucci shoes, a rare moment of genuity—the two of them screeching in synchrony in one of Jisung’s snaps. 

But there’s _ Jaemin and Hina _—and if anything in the world has given Jeno idealistic expectations about love—it’s the way Jaemin cares for her. The way she accepts it. Once, he’d asked her if being with Jaemin felt too overbearing, and she’d smiled. “It’s how he loves—how could I do anything but accept it?”

And Jeno is pretty sure that’s the exact moment he started believing in love. 

So like—when Hina calls Renjun—his phone waiting with Jeno at an empty table, lighting up his glass of Sprite—Jeno gets a feeling. The millisecond sensation of ice sliding down his back. Then nothing. 

“Renjun—hey,” Hina says when he picks up. “Have you seen Jaemin?”

“Uh—it’s Jeno actually,” Jeno corrects. “And no? We’re already at the party. But—why?”

“Oh! Oh, okay I see—I was just wondering, since he said he’d pick me up an hour ago and well, you know—he’s late sometimes, but not like this.”

“Did he not text?” Jeno asks. “Or—?”

“Uh, nothing. And I tried his dorm, but no one was in.”

The same feeling. Ice sliding down his back. 

“Uh—he’s probably just—yeah. Stuck in the coding hole or whatever. It’ll be fine—do you need one of us to come down and—?”

“Oh no! No, no that’s totally fine—don’t worry, I’ll go with Herin or somebody. But yeah, that sounds about right. I guess, just with the state he’s been in recently, I’m kinda on edge? But, yeah—he’s probably just lost in code or something.”

“Alright,” Jeno says. “I’ll catch you soon, then.” 

“Yeah! Thanks Jeno!” The call cuts off, and Jeno stares at the screen fade to black. The feeling again. Ice down his back. 

He finds Renjun like this—eyes closed, moving against the music like it’s nothing to him. Donghyuck across from him— eyes fixed on him with an alertness Jeno doesn’t know how to explain. 

So he interrupts. 

“Hey,” he says, coming up to them. “Jaemin.”

Renjun freezes immediately. He gets it right away. 

Donghyuck—“What?”

“He hasn’t gone to pick Hina up, and I just—”

“Spidersenses going off?” Donghyuck asks. And he _ gets _ it. Jeno nods. “ _ Fuck. _”

/

Jeno knows it’s a bad idea right away. 

The subway ride—fifteen minutes, everything keyed up to hell—Jeno’s knee shaking, Renjun’s glare reflected in the glass, Donghyuck texting, a frown set on his mouth. There’s that feeling—ice sliding down his back, but what used to be a cube now feels like a block, a glacier and Jeno—

“Fuck,” He says under his breath. “Why are the lights off?” 

It’s barely past ten, Jeno was here less than a week ago ‘til midnight—even then, the lobby lights were still on—and there’d been people around then too—he’d raced down the stairs with Mark, taking two at a time—and every floor had at least _ one _ person around. Most of the rooms they’d passed too—empty, but a couple after every long stretch of hall would have a light on, the buzz of a monitor going. Today—all the activity is from the basement and lower levels—just, the continuous hum of the generators—the first few flights they go up— _ silent. _ Not a single person, not a single machine—just dead. 

“You stay here after hours—_ willingly? _” Donghyuck asks. 

“I already got superpowers,” Jeno says. “Don’t need to worry about being experimented on since it—y’know, _ already _ happened.” 

“Right,” Donghyuck says. “Of course.”

Renjun, who’d gotten ahead of them both during this exchange—stops. Jeno hits the landing and gets it. 

The whole place is _ back. _ Electricity, lights, footsteps—everything is alive again. 

“What the fuck?” Renjun whispers to them. He stares down at Jeno, eyes dark, questions endless. 

Jeno doesn’t know—but, but—fingers pressing into Renjun’s back, a push forward—he can figure it out.

“This seems like an impromptu time for a lab-tour, no?” Donghyuck says, mostly to fill space as Jeno leads them to his work desk—both of them have been through his floor before, multiple times—and every single visit for Mark. Which retroactively sounds like he minds—but he doesn’t. Every one of Renjun’s visits has ended with botched cultures—microscope smashing the slide, syringe dousing the petri dishes with _ too _ much acidic medium, once—Renjun’s laugh echoing through the room as Mark stared in horror at his workbench short circuiting. 

The thing about the last one, while Jeno hates hard work going to waste—is that it got Mark to share a workspace with him for a week—the week that pretty much cemented Mark as the love of his life. Or something. 

Donghyuck’s visits—more like pop-ins, quick stops to the fifth floor after classes—before he got the car to whisk him away to his father’s office, interning as something or another—those happened way more frequently, and lasted for way less time. But like, even if his stops never lasted for more than an hour, they’d be _ incredibly _ distracting. Unlike Renjun, Donghyuck would make _ full _ use of their roller-chairs, propelling himself across the room to bounce back and forth between Mark and Jeno’s tables, like they’re playing pinball. As much as the constant skid sounds got on _ everyone’s _ nerves—four other people in the space with them, not anyone Jeno got acquainted, unlike Mark—and especially unlike Donghyuck—his charm was undeniable. As much as Mark and Jeno would share matching frowns across the room when they heard the first clack of Hyuck’s Gucci loafers, each of their labmates would perk up—however slightly. Then Donghyuck would waltz in, and chaos would ascend.

Much like right now—the motion sensor lights go on as Donghyuck steps in—like the whole place lights up just for him—and while Renjun looks out of place in his oversized aviator jacket (definitely Mark’s), and Jeno’s hunched over on himself, too on edge to be comfortable even in an environment as familiar as this—Donghyuck, in his fitted jacket, collared shirt unbuttoned to look casually dishevelled—seems like he’s meant to be here. Next in line for company president, making his rounds to check out the building—sliding into a chair like it’s his office, waiting for a service report to come in. 

Renjun looks between the both of them, then looks away—lets his eye catch on Mark’s desk, over on the far side of the room, notebooks and pencil case spilling out over it, like he’d run out in a hurry. 

Jeno goes over to his desktop, thumbing through his pockets til—a microchip, something Jaemin coded for him ages ago, slipped into his pocket ‘_ just in case _’ said the post it note Jeno had found it wrapped around it. He’s used it more times than he’d have guessed.

“Is that—” Renjun cuts himself off, when the light reflects off it, a flash of pink before moving back to blue. “Of course it is.”

When Jeno opens the file on the computer—it lists itself as ‘GOOD LUCK❤️’ Jeno clicks run.

For something the size of his nail—it works incredibly fast. Donghyuck does lazy spins in his chair, Renjun flicks his eyes on and off the screen, and Jeno tries to focus on the thrumming beneath their feet—they’re on the fifth floor, the power outage stopped on the third, but the landing on the fourth hadn’t been alive like _ this. _

“Did they—is there an experiment going on?” Jeno asks—realizing too late that neither of them can hear it like him. But Donghyuck still lifts, his head—tilts it as if to listen—and Renjun fixes his posture, both feet pressed flat to the floor as if to feel.

“Do you want me to go down and check?” Donghyuck asks, staring at Jeno’s lit-up screen—security feeds from all over the building—a couple rows loading into black screens. 

“Yeah,” Jeno says, looking at the room codes—third, fourth, and fifth are all down—a couple of the basement corridors are dark, but not blocked off—there’s a room on sub-level three that’s on loop, and a corner of it from the next camera over shows a corner of a shoe that’s—“Fuck, maybe not. I think Jaemin’s down in the—”

He taps the screen instead of saying anything. Renjun leans in, like something about the grainy texture to the frame will give away that it’s Jaemin. It doesn’t. 

“Shall we divide and conquer? Renjun goes down with you to the basement, I stay here—keep an eye on the cameras, Shadow goes down to check out whatever’s happening.”

Jeno looks at Renjun. _ Right. _ Right—he doesn’t have any powers. Renjun looks back, an answer almost present in the line of his shoulders. Too relaxed for how alert Donghyuck and Jeno are—almost like—

“Sure,” Jeno says—it’s all _ instinct _ but everything feels _ off _ and he doesn’t have time to _ think _ right now. “Meet back up here? Text if—”

“The usual drill,” Donghyuck cuts in, his shadow materializing from beneath him—a slow build up of black dust rising. Renjun _ stares, _ something almost slack in the quality of his face. “Yeah. I’m giving you half-an hour.”

Renjun’s still turned to him, eyes stuck on the sight of Shadow standing behind Donghyuck, as Jeno pushes him out. The two mirror images, one darker than the other. Any other time, Jeno would’ve found it as disconcerting as Renjun—just not now.

They take the stairs again, much more carefully this time—Renjun _ silent _ on every step, in a way that throws Jeno off so much he has to look back to make sure he’s still there. 

Down on sublevel 3, it’s worse—if it’s possible. The lights are half-on, half-off, every shadow stretched out—making the hallways feel like the walls are alive. The air is near-freezing, in a way that blocks off every other sense and forces them to stay grounded here, and it’s fucking _ quiet. _ Renjun breathes in little wisps—like he barely moves his chest, barely takes any air in—and even that sounds like overwhelmingly loud in here. He can tell the floor isn’t empty—there’s people here—outside of him, it’s just—

“Are—” Jeno turns to Renjun, question dropped before it’s asked. Renjun holds out a finger—_ wait _ —a hand reaching out to try one of the doors— _ locked, _ ear pressed to the metal—a whisper of a breath. 

“Jail block?” Renjun asks. “Or—offices?”

“Offices,” Jeno answers. “Are there people—?”

“Yeah,” Renjun answers. “_ Fuck. _ I don’t think they can hear us though.”

_ Soundproofing. _ Of course. The thing is—technically, _ technically _ —Jeno’s allowed to be here. If anyone catches them—he’s _ allowed _ to be here. Even if he knows he’s not supposed to be.

“Up head, the first left—” He says, nodding towards it—“That’s where the loop was.”

Renjun lifts his head up, staring up at the ceiling—the industrial pipes crawling through, hiding each of the cameras. His mouth quirks. They walk.

The cold cuts out his spidersenses—but once they’re a foot away, Jeno freezes. Renjun runs ahead, impatience stopping his caution, on his tiptoes to look through the slit on the door. 

“Jaemin.” They both breathe out at the same time. Renjun’s got an elbow aimed to the door—a collision that sounds more like metal against metal than what it should’ve been. But it doesn’t budge, Jeno moves forward—twists the knobs and feels it give away—a smile caught on his mouth, that Renjun scoffs at—before—

“We can explain,” Jeno says—a taser pointed at his chest, lanky security guard in a white shirt—a badge with the TY labs logo—Jaemin passed out in an office chair, blood crawling down his mouth, blood crawling down his mouth, blood—

Renjun takes a step forward, moves in a way Jeno doesn’t catch, but feels the impact of—and he’s with Jaemin, and there is a lanky security guard on Jeno’s feet—he doesn’t think, just shoots a web over his mouth, another at his hands—taser long kicked away by Renjun. 

“Is he—?” Jaemin’s head lolls in Renjun’s hold, a hand clawing through his shoulder that Jeno can’t think of right now—just steps forward to—another cut on his forehead, a bruise in red spreading out above his brow—teeth soaked with blood—Jeno knows these things look worse than they feel, he knows, he _ knows— _just—

Another web at the security guard—shot with more force, straight to his back—pinning him down to the ground in a way that makes his face hit the floor—

“Can you wake him up?” Jeno asks, and Renjun slaps Jaemin. A minute. A slow trickle of blood. A flutter of lashes.

“Jaemin, Jaemin, Jaemin,” Renjun chants, voice softer than Jeno’s ever heard it. He repeats it over and over, a hand coming to brush away a stray lock of red-soaked hair—so much more gentler than his slap would’ve given away. “Jaemin—”

Another long stretch. Somewhere, distantly, Jeno hears a thud of footsteps—movement from this floor, or the ones above—he can’t tell—he can’t care. 

“_ Jaemin _ —” Renjun says again, the same gentle, urgent voice. The same hard slap. A jolt this time—a low groan. Sound bubbling from his throat, like it’s gurgled in blood. Renjun again—“We need to _ go. _”

Jeno’s phone rings—cutting through the silence—he fumbles to pick it up, lets Donghyuck’s voice play out without an answer—“Hey, I—the cameras are going crazy—Shadow isn’t—I—we need to leave. We really need to fucking leave.” 

Renjun slaps Jaemin one last time, “Get up!” —this time his eyes open—and he gasps out—“Holy fucking shit—_ stop. _” 

Renjun forces him up—pushes him forward to Jeno, dragging on his shaky legs, Jeno’s arm looping around his waist, the other on his shoulders—they gotta get out—they gotta—

“Renjun!” Jeno screams—and Renjun spins just as Jeno gets a web out—some of it catches on his shoulder, but most of it pushes back the security—just enough for Renjun to—_ what the fuck— _

Jeno hitches Jaemin up on his shoulder, til his toes barely lift—and—they _ run. _ Jeno throws webs out whenever he has a shot, Renjun darts between each figure—sharp, fast, a blur of action that leaves them doubled over—just enough for Jeno to pin them with webs. They leave a trail of black and white, the blood of Jaemin’s mouth staining Jeno’s shoulder.

Upstairs—upstairs—it’s _ worse. _ Shadow races down the stairs—crashes into Renjun—and behind him are—

“Left!” Jeno screams, shoving Jaemin towards them—“Emergency exit down that hall—one of you just kick through it!” 

He runs straight into the guards—ducks a punch, lands one—a hit to the gut—a—_ fuck _ —doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter—Jeno lets his body move on autopilot, and races up the stairs—a stream of web behind him—three flights up—something ricochets off the railing—something grazes his arm and it _ burns _—there’s—a slow wall of pain growing somewhere on his chest. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Just push the door open, find Donghyuck, find—

_ —!!!— _

—Jeno stops—runs the other way—near crashing against a wall as he looks through layers of glass and—

_ Jeno? _ Mark mouths, safety glasses on, a clean white lab coat—something on the table in front of him, something in his hands, something—

_ —!!!— _

Jeno runs. To the other end of the hall—another emergency exit, screaming with alarm when he forces it open—another flight up, another step of footsteps joining whoever’s behind him—

—Donghyuck—Donghyuck in front of him—face slack with fear—Jeno grabs him, ducks a stray shot from the people behind him—and aims. 

They go down crashing. 

/

“What the _ hell _ was that!” Renjun is _ furious. _ They’re ducked into an alleyway, blocks away from the lab. 

Jaemin takes a minute to look around at each of them. Donghyuck, who’s the least worse for wear out of all of them—a few rips in his suit, places where they’d caught in the railing—hidden bruises forming wherever he’d been banged against the banged against—Shadow beside him, a black eye and split lip, elbow cradled to his chest. Material until Donghyuck chooses to suck him back in—both of them lacking shadows. Jeno knows when Donghyuck’s just trying to delay the pain—every injury sustained by him will be Donghyuck’s once they’re back to one—but halved. Renjun’s got bruises all over him, a cut on his cheek where a stray shot might’ve hit—holding out incredibly well for how much he’s been pushed around. Jaemin—looks the same as before—the blood’s just caked into dry flakes around his mouth, bruise more purple than red now. 

Jeno wants to think he’s doing okay—knows his body doesn’t feel that way, but it doesn’t matter. 

“The labs—” Jaemin says finally. “- they make my testosterone shots. They also make about—half of the pharmaceuticals in the city—the kicker—is that they’re the biggest provider for chemicals used to treat diseases with a high mortality rate. No one notices when people who are supposed to die—die. No one cares.”

“But of fucking course—you fucking do,” Renjun says, tone uneven with all the anger underlying it. 

“I do,” Jaemin says evenly. “And none of those people are dead. They’re in those labs, and they’re being experimented on.”

“_ Jaemin, _” Renjun hisses. Jeno realizes—belatedly, that it’s not anger—it’s worry. “You can’t just run into places like that and—”

Jaemin doesn’t apologize. 

All of them wait in silence, a long stretch of minutes to catch their breaths, knit their bones back together, stain each other with another’s blood. 

Later—later, when Renjun refuses to call Hina, when he won’t look at Jaemin wash the blood off his mouth, when he looks instead at—Donghyuck’s transplanted black eye—and leads him away by the wrist. Usually, if they stay over—Donghyuck and Jeno share Jaemin’s bed. Renjun curls into a corner of his bed, and Jaemin splays himself over his body like it’s a part of the sheets. 

Tonight, Jeno angles himself carefully until he finds a direction where it doesn’t hurt to sleep. The bed’s too small for both of them, but Jaemin draws himself into a straight line, eyes illuminated into something strange in the dark. They’re distinctly two separate beings—something Jeno’s not used to with Jaemin. It feels like they’re on different planes. 

“I’m going back,” Jaemin says. “Promise you’ll come?”

“Yeah,” Jeno says finally. He has to. 

/

In the morning, Jeno’s awake before any of them. His body runs on habit, even if he’s been bulldozed the day before. There’s a couple texts on his phone—near dead, and Jaemin doesn’t have the right charger. So that’s why he wanders, down into the hall, carefully opening Renjun’s door to—Renjun curled into Donghyuck’s chest like a comma, Donghyuck curled around him, an inverted picture. Something that feels like Jeno shouldn’t be seeing it.

The texts: (mark) hey can we talk?, (mark) u on campus? i have an hour free after molecular bio, (mark) i hope we’re cool

/

“I have something to tell you.” They’re sitting up over the edges of the NSU’s new molecular engineering building, legs dangling in the air. Mark looks a little sad, a little scared, and _ so _much like the boy Jeno’s in love with. 

And it hits him then, this clawing urge to tell him, Mark’s round, sad eyes, Jeno’s heart stuffed into his throat, the miles of endless unsaid things between them. _ One, _ Jeno thinks, even just _ one _ word more between could make it better. Make Mark feel like he’s less far away. That they’re both hanging off the edge of a building, the sky a pale shade of blue that’s above them both, that when Jeno stretches a foot out, and Mark brushes the head of his converse against it—they’re both _ here. _ Jeno’s not a million miles out of reach yet, Mark doesn’t have to look like that yet. 

“I do too,” Jeno says. And he doesn’t stare at their feet like he always does, where the edges Mark’s black shoes always touch Jeno’s white vans. He lifts his head, and _ looks _at Mark. Their brown eyes, the same shade of near-black, another thing that makes them so so close. Jeno takes the leap. “I’m Spiderman.” 

Mark’s body falls, but Jeno’s on a tight string and he can’t let go yet—“I think—you’re really cool.”

“_ Oh. _ ” And he sounds a little wounded, like Jeno hurt him—but Jeno wouldn’t do that. Jeno would _ never _ do that. And his face twitches in all these little places—a rise of his cheeks, lines disappearing and reappearing between his brows, this almost dimple on the side of his mouth—and all of it is watery. Like Mark’s sliding through expressions trying to find one to keep, but everything is slipping away from him. 

Jeno feels his stomach prepare himself for the drop, tension spreading through until the tightest spot is the pit at his center, chest empty, prepared for crash—and then Mark finds something to hold onto. A smile. Not one of his best ones, not even one of his _ good _ones. And Jeno doesn’t have enough years with him to know what this smile is, he can only try to figure out the tone of Mark’s voice and that—

—that stupid smile still plastered over his face, but all the happiness is sliding off it. He looks sad. Jeno hates it. He _ hates _ it. 

He slides his hand over Mark’s, and Mark still doesn’t look at him, but he turns his palm over until it meets Jeno’s. Moves slowly until their hands interlock, and leaves it at that. His grip is clammy, loose in Jeno’s and it feels like something fragile. Jeno doesn’t know what the feeling is—it’s kinda like floating, kinda like sinking. Kinda like both. 

/

When Jeno walks back into Jaemin’s room, Renjun’s standing in the center. Donghyuck changed out of his designer suit, into designer sweats. Jaemin’s backpack carefully packed into a slim rectangle, the ever-present pins gone. Then he comes in—the lines in his stature relaxed in a way that only—

“Yeah, see you soon,” Jaemin says into his phone. And just before he hangs up—“I love you.”

/

It’s not as easy getting in this time—Renjun with his silent footsteps and invisible presence, does the infiltration on his own—he’s gone for minutes and then—a light goes from red to green, and even before they’re halfway across the floor—the alarms start screaming. 

From there—all Jeno remembers is running. Aiming. Swinging. 

His job is to get Jaemin to the data centers—somewhere near the top of the building. Almost easy—they climb into an elevator, he blows out the top—shoots a web somewhere up the cables and propels them up. 

Jaemin’s eyes nearly glaze over when they reach the room. Huge black boxes, rows of blinking lights, wires snaking around. The whole place feels unsafe. 

Jaemin, staring around him in awe, says. “Beauty is terror.”

There’s a laugh somewhere behind Jeno’s throat, and Jaemin looks at him—a shiteating grin stuck on his face. And that does it—draws out the smile in Jeno’s. Best friends—

And then, the walls explode around them.

/

Jeno grabs Jaemin and shoots—doesn’t care what he’s aiming at—just _ away. AWAY. _

Stray bullets all around them—down—down—down—falling falling falling—Jaemin’s mouth slack—the sound in Jeno’s head a high, drawn out note—a crash. Dust all around them. Jaemin’s breath a cough. 

/

Everything is a blur—it’s not a fight—it’s a chase. Jeno runs through endless hallways, tries not to get lost, tries not to see Mark in every reflection of the glass walls around them. Jaemin follows behind him, yells things Jeno doesn’t hear.

They find stairs, they find figures in black with guns, they leave a trail of stickyweb and blood. A new cut on Jaemin’s chest, _ a new scar to match the other ones! _—he shrieks—Jeno felt the crunch of his own bones, but he runs faster than he can feel it—runs down down down—they skips steps, Jaemin almost falls—and Jeno shoots out another web before he can. Nose bleeding with the force of the jerk. 

Another floor, another endless hall of motion sensor lights and unlocked doors, and glass Jeno keeps seeing Mark reflected in. Mark was here yesterday, he thinks. Not today. He’s not here today. Glass shatters around them—the impacts of bullets gone astray—Jeno stops thinking—shoves Jaemin in front of him—webs the doors shut behind them. 

Finally—finally—a scream that sounds like Donghyuck—a calm moment, hidden away behind a wall—Renjun stepping out—a warning to cover their ears—bodies bleeding out from their ears in a pile all around him. A calm moment a calm moment a—

“You’re a fucking _ siren? _” Donghyuck yells. “You have powers?”

“Yeah,” Renjun says, voice ragged. Breathless. “I can keep a fucking secret.”

Jaemin says—

Jeno says—

Donghyuck says—“Mark. He’s here. Shadow—”

One more time—the walls explode around them. 

/

Jeno grabs Jaemin—Jeno grabs Jaemin—Jeno shoots a web, and hugs Jaemin to himself. 

Somewhere—somewhere—somewhere on his body there’s a splash of red. A stain pouring from his heart, like all the love in there is unleashed. Unable to contain it. Blood spills onto Jeno’s hands. All his love, spilling out. What more can Jeno do than to accept it?

“No,” Jeno says. “No. Jaemin—Jaemin—”

Jaemin doesn’t answer. His eyes are wide, glassy. Illuminated in a strange light. 

/

“Jeno!” Renjun yells. “Jeno!”

It’s Renjun, eyes blown wide through the wreckage around them, voice hoarse from yelling in the smoke. He’s staggering through the ruins, Hyuck hanging off his shoulder like dead-weight, eyes glassy like his body’s been shut off.

And Jeno, in the same state—can’t move. It’s Renjun that comes towards him, that drags both of them out of the smoke. Renjun with bloody hands and narrow shoulders and all the strength that’s left his friends. 

He looks at them, breath still catching in his throat. And says. “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Jeno says. His best friend is _ dead. _ Jaemin is _ dead. _ Jaemin’s _ gone. _ Jaemin is never coming back. “It really fucking isn’t.”

“Mark’s dead.” Donghyuck says. “Jaemin’s dead. Nothing is okay.”

“It will be.” Renjun says, because he’s the only one of them that can. “It has to be.”

**Author's Note:**

> parts 1 and 3 should come out at the same time! at that point it will be posted in a different order. please anticipate!


End file.
